Contributing Factors, Attribution, and Coping in Academic Boredom: An Exploratory Case Study of Graduate Students in Education

Abstract

This exploratory qualitative case study investigates how graduate students in education experience, attribute, and combat academic boredom. Three areas of concern are addressed: (a) the contributing factors to boredom, (b) how attributional style (internal vs. external) relates to coping with boredom, and (c) the differences between combating class-related boredom and learning-related boredom. Results showed that the onset of boredom was mostly influenced by a lack of interest, lack of utility value, and autonomy frustration. This study extended the existing literature by discovering an interaction between students’ attributional style and their coping strategies for boredom during classroom instruction. Specifically, students who argued that the instructor should hold more responsibility for boredom in class tended to take avoidance coping as their primary strategy (e.g., doodling). By comparison, students who opted to approach the problem positively (e.g., taking notes) are prone to attribute internally. Attribution does not appear to have a mediating effect on the relationship between experience of boredom and coping strategies for learning-related boredom. Implications for graduate and adult education and findings in the context of recent theoretical frameworks are discussed.

The happy learner: Effects of academic boredom, burnout, and engagement

“…Although teachers do their best to make lessons and classes as interesting as possible, some learners will still find those lessons “boring.” Thus, learners need to learn how to create a higher sense of “value” for the mathematics and English subject domains. Learners would like to co-create learning and perhaps allowing learners to choose which activities they could complete would allow them the sense of control they like to have ( Xie et al, 2021 ). In this way, they will target the causes of boredom ( Nett et al, 2010 ).…”